


Missing: One dragon

by siojo



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragon!Ace, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-graphic death, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siojo/pseuds/siojo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco really, really should let others in on his plans, because now he's three months north of his home with an army about to march on them. Also, he appears to have been banished into a dragon's horde that's down a dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing: One dragon

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have no idea what happened, but have some dragons?

“Oh,” Blackbeard tips his head to the side, eyes catching on the vibrant blue flames just visible through where the thatched roof had rotted away. “We appear to have a guest.”

One of his men activates the trap before Marco has a chance to react, still tired from the rushed healing he had done for Thatch and the chase after the trail that Blackbeard had left for him to follow.

“Hello Marco,” Blackbeard says, lips pulling back from his teeth in a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you quite so soon.”

Marco, human now, and fighting the binding holding him, bares his teeth in a snarl, “Overconfident, aren’t ya, Teach?”

“Not nearly as much as you,” Blackbeard laughs, “with Thatch unconscious and barely clinging to life and you not informing anyone of my actions. Did you?”

“Of course I did,” Marco counters, voice steady.

Blackbeard smiles slowly, triumph bright on his face, “No, you didn’t. You let that temper of yours get the better of you. None of the family know why you left, they won’t suspect you, but they won’t come looking for you.”

“You can’t keep me here.”

“No,” Blackbeard agrees easily, “But I can banish you so far away that you won’t be able to get back before I take Moby for my own.”

Marco jerks, struggling harder, as the spell surrounds him and vanishing without a sound. There’s nothing in the place where he had been.

Blackbeard claps his hands together, turning back to his men with a smirk, eyes glittering with something dark.

Marco would return to the ruins of Moby Dick and the corpses of his family.

~

Marco blinks, the abandoned cabin vanishing to be replaced with what could only be some kind of cave, without a single hint to where an entrance could be. Glowing moss creeps along the dark stone, giving just enough light that Marco can see as he stumbles to his feet, trying to remove the remnants of the spell clinging to his skin.

“Fuck,” He hisses, hands scrubbing against his arms. “Where am I?”

“I’m more concerned about how you got here,” Marco turns, overbalancing at the foreign magic that still clung to him to find the young man that had spoken. “How did you get here?”

The young man pushes himself off the wall that he had been leaning against, hands shoved deep into the pockets of the shorts he was wearing, silver eyes glowing in the dark as they studied Marco.

“I was banished from Moby Dick by a traitor.”

The man hums, head cocking to the side, “Never heard of it. Moby Dick,” The words roll strangely off of his tongue. “Is that a town?”

“A country,” Marco corrects.

“Moby Dick, what a strange name,” The man grins, eyes bright with laughter. “Where is it?”

Marco shrugs, “I don’t know where we are, for all I know it’s across an ocean.”

“Oh. I have maps? You could study them if you want? I’m Ace.”

“Marco.”

Ace nods, turning and pausing before the tunnel that he had appeared from, mouth opening for a long moment before snapping back shut, leading the way through a maze of passages to a cave that remained dark as pitch, the glowing moss extending only a touch past the entrance.

The darkness is oppressive, almost alive as it curls at the edges of where the moss ends. Ace pauses, just beyond the glow of it, his eyes glowing with their own light, the only piece of him that is visible. He stares blankly back at Marco, who stands within the safety of the light, before understanding drifts across his face.

Fire floats almost at the top of the enormous cavern, as if it was a chandelier, light glinting off of piles of treasure and towering shelves of books and scrolls.

A dragon’s horde.

“Ace,” Marco hisses, taking a frantic step backwards, eyes wide as his searches for movement. Ace ignores him, moving deeper into the horde. “Ace!”

Ace finally, finally, stops, “Marco?”

“This is a dragon’s horde!”

“I’ve never seen a dragon here,” Ace answers, with an easy shrug, eyes drifting over the area, “And I’ve lived here for years. Are you gonna come look at the maps?”

Marco glances nervously for the dragon one last time, taking a deep breath and hurrying after Ace.

“A lot of the maps are old,” Ace apologizes, clambering over a golden vase that looked like it might tower over Marco’s Oyaji if it was upright. “My Brother brings more when he visits but that’s not often.”

“That’s fine. Moby Dick’s been around for centuries.”

Ace nods, ducking to fiddle with a pile of scrolls before holding one up triumphantly, “Okay.” He moves to the table and spreads it out, “We’re here.”

Marco stares at the point that Ace taps, the map declaring the capital city of Raftel, Baterilla, in neat print just above Ace’s finger. Almost three months of travel to the north of Moby Dick.

“This is Moby,” Marco taps a tiny dot, the writing smudged. “I’ll never get home in time.”

“There are books on magic, if you want?” Ace offers.

“I am magic,” Marco says sharply, guilt pressing against his chest. “Sorry.”

“Oh. My brother knows a witch, I think they left me a communication spell somewhere.” Ace looks thoughtfully at the piles of things around them. “It shouldn’t take long to find it.”

“Unless the dragon kills us first,” Marco mutters, eying the piles of treasure as if the dragon might appear from underneath one of them.

Dragons could hibernate for decades, as long as Ace hadn’t stolen any of it’s horde, then it wouldn’t have noticed him there.

“Are dragons dangerous?” Ace asks, rolling up the scroll and carefully stacking it with the others to grab a different one. “I heard they were murderous monsters.”

“Not the way you’re thinking. All creatures are dangerous, but dragons are content to leave the annoying alone until they attack or try to take their horde. I knew a dragon whose horde was his friends and family, he burned a whole nation to ash for daring to insult them,” Marco explains.

Ace smiles, his cheeks pinking, as he hands Marco a few scrolls. The seals are different on each one. The newest holds a strange cross with curls on each end, an orange at the end of the topmost curl, but it’s the one second one that catches Marco’s attention, the mustachioed skull of Raftel.

Roger’s personal sigil, used by his horde to mark their works, because their treasure was Roger’s.

Marco shakes his head, mind already returning to the most important part of this, the distance between where he was and home. Even flying at full speed would take two month, he would barely make it to Red Force’s tiny swath of nation before Teach’s men marched on the capital.

Marco ducks his head, taking a deep breath through his nose as he pushes the idea of his family slaughtered from his thoughts.

“Are you hungry?” Ace asks suddenly. “My brother used to tell me that I was suppose to feed my guests.”

“I’m not,” Marco’s stomach cuts him off, growling loudly enough to echo.

Ace laughs, “Bananawari!” He stands, brushing off his shorts. “All the maps are here, don’t damage them.”

“Of course,” Marco promises.

The maps won’t help him, none of them can magically make the distance between the ruins of Raftel and Moby vanish so that Marco can get home in time. He grabs another anyways.

He has no idea how long it is before Ace reappears, his shirt changed, now yellow instead of the patterned one from before, a hat hanging from around his neck.

“Food’s done, coming?” He asks and leads the way to where a lake takes up most of the corner of the cavern, the weary eyes of bananawari glaring balefully from it’s depths. “Ignore them, they’re just mad.”

Marco can understand, considering Ace has three of their kind on spits over a fire that must be about the same size as the one that lights the cave.

“That’s a lot of food,” Marco says slowly.

Ace wrinkles his nose, “Two for me and one for you. Do you eat more than one?”

“I can eat maybe half of it,” Marco agrees, thoughts stuck on the idea of someone like Ace eating two whole bananawari on his own. “That’s over half a ‘wari uneaten.”

“I’ll eat it too.” Ace assures, already tearing a piece of one of his own.

Ace does. It’s one of the most disturbing things that Marco has ever seen, but Ace eats two and a half bananawari without an issue, and sets the bones in a pile off to the side.

“Can you do magic?” Marco asks finally.

“Nah, the fire stuff isn’t really magic,” Ace answers, flames sprouting at his fingertips, “I’m like you, I am magic.”

Marco nods.

Those are the facts. A being was either a being of magic or could use it. There were discrepancies, creatures of magic that could do a few minor spells, but the more dangerous, rare the creature the less magic they could do. Marco couldn’t do any magic, he was made of magic.

Moby was doomed.

~

“Marco’s still missing,” Vista reports, his arms crossing over his chest. “And there’s no news on where he was headed. The last person to spot something blue and yellow was a young girl in the fields to the west and we aren’t sure if her sighting is valid.”

Whitebeard nods, his sake jug tapping against the table, “And Thatch?”

“He’s alive,” Ana answers, seated neatly in the chair that had brought to the table for her as the one that was assigned to Thatch personally for the duratin of his healing. “He’s alive, but we have no idea when he’ll wake up or who hurt him.”

“So we know nothing,” Izo states coolly, his head resting on his interlaced hands. “And we’re on high alert until such a time as we can find something to explain what has occurred.”

“Aye,” Jiro agrees, tiredly.

~

“You said your brother knows a witch?” Marco asks a few days later, giving up on the maps and the small hope that one of his siblings would attempt to contact him.

Ace blinks at Marco over the top of a book, “Well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone know a witch? You wanna see if she’ll help?”

“Please.”

“Okay.” He stands and blinks at the piles of things, as if he isn’t sure where to start, before snatching up a smooth glass orb and crushing it between his fingers. “There we go.”

A picture appears, a young man with a straw hat blinks at them, “Ace!”

“Hey Luffy!” Ace grins back. “Is Robin around?”

Luffy nods, “Yeah, you want to talk to her?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, already moving and the picture following him. “We picked up a new friend, I call him, Traffy.”

“My name is Trafalgar,” A man with a long coat snaps, looking up from his book. “Mugiwara-ya?”

“Traffy, this is my big brother, Ace,” Luffy’s eyes narrow in on Marco. “Who’s he?”

“This is Marco, he got banished to my caves.” Ace answers.

Luffy blinks, but says nothing, even Trafalgar looks curious, before a dark haired woman appears.

“Hello again, Ace,” She says smiling blandly.

“Yo, you busy Robin? My friend could use some help,” Ace says brightly, smiling in a way that makes Marco want to screech in annoyance, his nation is in danger, there isn’t time for them to be flirting. “Robin meet Marco, he’s from Moby!”

“From Moby,” Robin says slowly, eyes sharp as they focus on him. “And why would one of Moby’s Princes be so far from home?”

Marco scowls, “I was banished by a traitor, he believes that if I’m not there to warn my family that he can eliminate them and take Moby for his own.”

“Hm,” Robin looks thoughtful. “I can’t return to Ace’s caverns, we’re across a sea currently,” She look apologetic “But, Ace,” Ace looks up. “We did find a way that you might be able to help.”

“Monsters must stay sealed away,” Ace states with a cold certainty, his right hand dropping to the metal bracelet around his left wrist. “You know that better than most do, Robin.”

Robin’s smiles turns sharp, “Oh? And where is there a monster?” Neither of them look away from the other, before Robin sighs, “Still too stubborn aren’t you?”

“Well, you know,” Ace agrees, his shoulders hunching in on himself. “Other options?”

Luffy bounces, “Sorry Ace got to go, the flamingo that I’m gonna beat up is here!”

The spell returns to a remade glass sphere with the echo of Trafalgar’s voice correcting Luffy that it was ‘Doflamingo, not a flamingo, Mugiwara-ya!’

Ace sighs, “Sorry, Luffy’s probably got himself caught up in another adventure,” Marco wonders if he’s imagining the longing in Ace’s voice. “I, I don’t have anyone else for you to ask.”

“It’s fine, thank you, for the help.” Marco means it, he hadn’t expected any aid and here’s a young man that had offered him a place to stay, fed him, and tried to help him find a way home. “I need to plan.”

Marco doesn’t know what he can do, he would have to go to another country, a few of the ruined places around Raftel still house people descended from those who had been of Raftel and had expressed a willingness to let Moby’s armies protect them. He remembers a witch living in one of them too.

They’re a little further then he wants, but closer than Moby and closer than Red Force.

“You’re gonna leave soon, aren’t you?” Ace asks him later that night, playing with the bones of some sort of long sea creature that had been dragged out the lake.

Marco nods, “I have to.”

“Yeah, family is important,” Ace agrees, standing and brushing off his shorts. “Don’t move.”

Ace vanishes and returns with one of the maps, one of the ones sealed with the spiral ended crosses and it’s orange, holding it out to Marco like it’s precious.

“So you can find your way home,” Ace explains. “It’s a gift.”

Marco stares at it in confusion, but accepts, “Thank you?”

“Come on, I’ll show you the way out,” Ace says turning his back to Marco, hurrying away from where they were sitting. “It’s a bit of a walk and you can sleep there tonight, so that you don’t have to make the walk tomorrow morning.”

Ace leads Marco directly to the exit and stops just before the last turn, handing him a bag that he must have stored there at some point or another.

“Thank you for this,” Marco says finally. “I am grateful.”

“You’re welcome,” Ace answers, smile bright and his hat tipped back from his face. “Good luck, with the whole saving your home.”

Marco pauses, “You, you could come with me?”

“No,” Ace answers, his hand going to the metal bracelet around his wrist, like it does every time Marco mentions the outside world. “No, I really can’t, but thank you.”

“You sure that the dragon won’t hunt me down for it’s treasure?” Marco asks, hoping to break the tension between them.

It works, Ace ducking his head before throwing it back to laugh, arms wrapping around his stomach, as if he can’t stop himself. Marco grins, unable to stop himself, proud that he made Ace laugh one last time before leaving.

“The dragon won’t come after you,” Ace promises, smile almost sad.

~

“A spell?” The woman behind the bar asks curiously, her head tipping to the side. “I can’t do magic, but my husband can. Darling, someone is here for magic.”

The beaded curtain moves, pushed to the side by an arm, a man that Marco had long thought was dead stepping out from the rear. Rayleigh looks as surprised to see Marco as Marco is to see him.

“Been a while, Newgate,” Rayleigh states calmly, recovering faster than Marco. “You seem a little too far north.”

“I was banished,” Marco says slowly. “I heard that you were killed in the fall of Raftel.”

Rayleigh laughs, his glasses higher on his nose then they use to be, his hair longer and grayer, but still very much the man that had put Roger on a throne that hadn’t previously existed. Still alive.

“There were a lot of rumors that came about after Raftel fell,” Rayleigh agrees. “Come on, I’ll send you home.”

Marco shrugs off his bag, setting it on Shakky’s bar, “Please return this to Ace.”

Shakky stops, her hands shaking against the glass she’s holding, “Ace?”

“He lives in the caves?” Marco asks, catching sight of the paling of Rayleigh’s face. “Is, did he do something wrong? He wouldn’t leave them, even when I offered to let him come with me.”

Rayleigh doesn’t answer, ushering Marco into the back room and banishing him back to Moby before Marco has a chance to ask again.

He stumbles, blinking away the look on Rayleigh’s face and the rough wooden walls, to find himself in the front halls of the palace, his oyaji staring at him in shock.

Haruta shouts and in moments, Marco has been dragged to the ground under the mass of his siblings, their hands checking him for injuries and demanding to know where he’s been for the past three weeks. Three weeks.

“I know who tried to murder Thatch,” Marco says when they let him up, shoving his adventure in the north away for now, the part of him that wants to know what Rayleigh knew of Ace. “He’s coming to take Moby.”

“And we will be waiting for him then, son,” Whitebeard agrees, smile on his face.

It’s later that night when Marco is telling Whitebeard of the young man that had helped him and shown him the map that he learns anything that might suggest what went down.

“You should take good care of this,” Whitebeard touches the map gently with a single finger. “Dragons rarely gift their treasure to anyone, you must have made quite the impression on him.”

“I didn’t meet a dragon,” Marco says in confusion.

Whitebeard smiles, “Didn’t you?”

Marco doesn’t understand. He still doesn’t the next morning, dressed in the armor that he is always forced to wear but doesn’t need.

The air overheard rumbles with magic, Marco can feel the spells brushing along his skin as he steps out onto the balcony, watching the army ready itself, already ready to join them on the battlefield.

“You look distracted,” Izo states, joining him, smoothing the sleeves of his kimono. “Is this about the boy that you met in the north?”

“Oyaji says that my map is part of a dragon’s horde, I thought dragons never parted with their horde?” Marco asks curiously.

Izo hums, “I remember hearing a story, years ago, that dragons courted their mates with their horde. I wouldn’t know how they went about it, but perhaps that what Oyaji meant.”

“I didn’t meet any dragons. There wasn’t a dragon, it was me and Ace.”

“Well,” Izo shrugs elegantly. “Perhaps the boy was a piece of the dragon’s horde. Dragons collect things, pretty or interesting, that doesn’t mean just one or the other. Perhaps it wanted to make you part of it as well.”

Marco laughs, “I won’t do well as part of a horde.”

“No,” His brother agrees, “You would be a poor addition to a horde.”

They both know that’s a lie. Hordes are composed of the rare and interesting, Marco would be an excellent addition to any horde, but he would never stay, because his family is more important.

“Come on,” Izo pats his shoulder, eyes bright, “We’ve got a battle to win.”

~

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding,” Rayleigh states, leaning against Ace’s favorite tunnel entrance, keeping out of the cavern proper. “I thought you were dead.”

“Not dead,” Ace mutters into his arm, curled up into himself. “What you want, Uncle?”

“My aren’t you demanding for someone that let us think he was dead for almost a century. Aren’t you a little young to be giving things to people?”

Ace flushes, ears turning pink, “He smells pretty, I knew he wouldn’t stay, so I had to give him something. He’s horde too now.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Rayleigh sighs, gesturing at Ace’s horde like it’s nothing. “You could have adventures.”

“They burned Raftel and my mom to the ground for that man’s adventures.”

Rayleigh sighs, “You always took the wrong messages from your father’s adventures. He killed for his horde, wouldn’t you do the same for yours? Haven’t you?”

Ace doesn’t answer, hands covering his ears, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation again.

“Ace,” He risks a glance to see Shakky too, her hands on her hips. “You’re just going to let a piece of your horde wander far away where you can’t protect it?”

“I have this too,” Ace mutters, knowing it’s a weak excuse.

“This is your mother’s horde and yes some of it is yours now, but Ace, Marco is yours.”

Ace ducks his head, “He’s not horde. He’s mine.”

“You little idiot,” Rayleigh grumbles. “Come on, you’ve got a war to get yourself invol…Ace?”

Ace growls, head tipping to the side, “That bastard.”

~

Marco ducks the first ball of darkness that streaks towards him from Teach, barely making it out the way of the third and fourth, before finding his legs frozen in place, directly in the path of the fifth. He ducks his head, arms coming up to protect his head from the brunt of the attack.

A roar shatters the cacophony of the battle, something coiling around Marco and hiding him away.

“Marco?”

“Ace?” Marco moves his hands to find himself surrounded by coils of scales, large wings wrapping around him and leaving him at the mercy of the dragon staring down at him with wide silver eyes.

“Ace?”

“Here,” The dragon answers sheepishly. “Hi.”

Marco laughs, “I told you that the dragon would come after me!”

“Well, I wasn’t going to,” Ace pouts, it looks strange on the face of a dragon. “I’m going to eat him.”

“I think you would upset your stomach.”

Ace grins, “I’m a dragon, I can eat anything.”

Marco doesn’t get to see Ace eating Teach, since Ace uses his long neck to stretch the distance without letting Marco out of the coils of his tail.

“Marco?” Izo asks curiously, from a distance. “I thought you didn’t see any dragons.”

“I have to revise my statement,” Marco says calmly, watching Ace crunch one last times before returning to Marco. “I was not correct in my statement.”

Ace huffs, “No one ever suspects dragons.”

It takes coaxing to get Ace to release him from his hold, but Ace refuses to return to his human form, ambling along in Marco’s wake as the army regroups and starts back to the palace.

Whitebeard meets them on the front steps, “I had heard you were dead, Prince Ace.”

Ace ducks his head, “King Newgate,” He shifts and the dragon is once more the young man that Marco met. “A pleasure to meet you again.”

“Prince?” Marco asks.

“I’m not, not really.” Ace mutters. “Raftel’s gone and it’s not like I’m going to rebuild it, but there’s still people who call me a prince. King Newgate is one of them.”

“What’s this about you gifting something to my oldest son?” Whitebeard continues, as if he hadn’t waited for their little aside to finish.

Ace flushes, “I…I can do what I want!”

“Oyaji, stop teasing him,” Marco sighs, avoiding the look that Izo is giving him. “He’s still a little too young for me anyways.”

“Just you wait,” Ace turns on Marco, poking him in the chest. “I’m gonna give you the best gift ever and you won’t be able to turn me down!”

“I look forward to it.”

 


End file.
